We had a chance to get one special Geforce 8600 GT card. The normal cards are clocked at 540 MHz core and 1400 MHz memory but this XXX card runs at 620 MHz core and 1600 MHz memory. The best part is that it costs only €150 and is available at press time.
The card comes in an extremely small box but don't be fooled,
it's a quite fast part. It has 32 Unified Shaders clocked at 1190 MHz and eight
ROPs. The only bad thing about the 8600GT / GTS generation is that the memory works
at 128 bit only.
Well let's forget about that for a second. XFX Geforce 8600 GT
XXX is the full name of the product we tested. The card comes with 256MB GDDR3
memory has 2x DVI ports, TV-out and is of course PCIe only. It supports SLI and
has a SLI connector on top of the card. The black PCB looks really nice and the
white cooler fits the design.
XFX made the DVI ports in green and it fits the design, on top of them you
will find a S-video out. Even the bracket is in black. The card doesn’t have
a PCIe 6 pin power connector and gets all its power from the PCIe slot.
The cooler is
efficient and quiet and it looks a lot like the 7600 GT cooler we seen on the
previous generation of the cards. It is not noisier than the cooler on a 8600
GTS, but this one doesn't cool the memory. The memory comes from Qimonda and we believe
that it works at 1.4 ns.
The package includes a driver CD (v. 101.02 XP), S-Video Cable, six pin to Molex
power cable and a DVI dongle. Of course the box comes with a manual. The card doesn't support HDCP but the new version of the card might support it.
